Culture » May 20, 2008

Atheisms Unholy Trinity

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Last spring, Chris Hedges, the Pulitzer Prize-winning former foreign correspondent for the New York Times, flew to California to see some atheists about God. Over the course of two debates – one in Los Angeles, the other in Berkeley – Hedges sparred with Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith, and Christopher Hitchens, author of God Is Not Great. According to Aneli Rufus, who reported on the Hedges vs. Hitchens debate for AlterNet, Hedges was “trounced.”

Atheism 2, God 0.

Now, out of these debates comes Hedges’ latest book, I Don’t Believe In Atheists (Free Press, 2008), a relentless, deeply considered defense of the religious impulse.

The book’s title is neither an accurate personal statement nor a reflection of the volume’s contents. As Hedges has said, he is no atheist. Nevertheless, he eloquently defends atheists who are “intellectually honest” – those “who accept an irredeemable and flawed human nature” – and believes “they hold an honored place in a pluralistic and diverse community.” Intended to provoke, the title sets up false expectations for a simplistic “no atheists in foxholes” screed that sells the book short.

Instead, Hedges’ main target is utopia, which he calls “the most dangerous legacy of the Christian faith and Enlightenment.” And primarily in the works of evolutionary biologist and author Richard Dawkins, as well as Hitchens and Harris – the “new atheists,” as Hedges calls them – the author finds a morally bankrupt utopian worldview that divides humanity between the primitive faithful and the civilized rational.

According to Hedges, the new atheists argue that once humanity is delivered from religion – what Hitchens has called “man-made filthy propaganda” – and places its faith in science and reason, we will finally advance morally as a species. But “hidden under the jargon of reason and science,” writes Hedges, this conviction is a secular version of religious extremism. To Hedges, this makes them dangerous.

“Too many of the new atheists, like the Christian fundamentalists, support the imperialist projects and pre-emptive wars of the United States as necessities in the battle against terrorism and irrational religion,” he writes. To make his case, he cites Harris’ justification for a nuclear first-strike on the Middle East and Hitchens’ continued support for democracy-via-bombing in Iraq.

Hedges doesn’t mince words about these atheists: They are “suburban mutations,” “hopeless epicures” and “products of the morally stunted world of entertainment.” Because many atheists conflate radical, literalist religion with all religion – and refuse to see any good that has come from faith – Hedges sees them as intellectually shallow. To him, one must come at faith honestly – through years of sustained thought, reading, reflection and introspection. The same goes for atheism.

One of the strengths of Atheists is Hedges’ authority to write on the topic. The son of a Presbyterian minister, he witnessed how his father’s faith inspired him to fight for social justice, even when it was deeply unpopular in the rural, upstate New York communities in which he preached. It was this model of courage-through-faith that led Hedges to pursue a degree from Harvard’s Divinity School, where he gained his understanding of theology.

Hedges spent the next 20 years covering foreign wars for a host of newspapers, including the Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief. He has witnessed many of the late 20th century’s worst horrors – in Algeria, Bosnia, El Salvador, Iraq, Kosovo and Sudan (where he was imprisoned). Hedges mined these experiences to great effect in his excellent, hard-hitting 2003 book, War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning.

In a 2008 interview with Salon, Hedges said, “I spent so long in war zones that I think we don’t know what we would do under repression and abuse. … That’s the brilliance of the great writers on the Holocaust, like Primo Levi. … They understood the humanity of their own killers.”

Hedges spends the first half of Atheists refuting the claim that humanity has advanced morally. “The Enlightenment myth … taught that our physical and social environment could be transformed through rational manipulation. … [But] human history is not a long chronicle of human advancement. It includes our cruelty, barbarism, reverses, blunders and self-inflicted disasters.”

In the second chapter, “God and Science,” Hedges provides an engrossing history of Darwinism and the Enlightenment, and their dark legacies of violence. He cites Friedrich Nietzsche’s fear that the British would use social Darwinism to justify imperialism, and offers a pellucid argument against science’s application to philosophy.

Hedges understands the depravity of which human beings are capable – be they secular or religious. “To turn away from God is harmless. To turn away from sin is catastrophic,” he writes.

At the same time, we all experience moments of transcendence – such as a parent’s love for his child – that we are driven to account for. The meaning of this contradiction is the domain of religion. Science can never adequately grapple with such subjective human complexity:

Scientific ideas … are embraced or rejected on the basis of quantifiable evidence. But human relationships and social organizations interact and function effectively when they are not rigid, when they accept moral ambiguity, and when they take into account the irrational.

Hedges draws from the works of artists like Samuel Beckett, Albert Camus, Willa Cather, Joseph Conrad, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Uta Hagen, as well as figures like Thomas Aquinas, Sigmund Freud, Reinhold Niebuhr and Arthur Schopenhauer. These individuals, who wrestled with – and against – faith and a tragic worldview, serve as Hedges’ touchstones as he seeks to express the core limits of humanity and what he calls “the possibilities of religion.”

Hedges’ writing has a hurtling, runneth-over quality that can be redundant and vague at times (as in his section on the concept of “tempered free will”). He is also prone to cranky digressions (as in his section on a fashion designer profiled on CNN). And some readers may be disappointed to find that Hedges does not systematically dismantle each argument in the new atheists’ books.

Instead, Hedges views the new atheists not so much as an organized threat, but as indicators of a larger tendency in America toward a dangerously simplistic way of thinking. “It is fear, ignorance, a lack of introspection and the illusion that we can create a harmonious world that leads us to sanction the immoral,” Hedges writes. “Our enemies have no monopoly on sin, nor have we one on virtue.”

Hedges proposes the radical notions that we admit our complicity in the violence of the world and acknowledge the humanity of our enemies. Religion – with its other long history of encouraging compassion toward others and introspection about the evil at the center of humanity’s heart – is too valuable in this aim to be flatly dismissed. Amen.

Jarrett Dapier is a former assistant publisher at In These Times. Previous work for ITT includes interviews with playwright Christopher Shinn and Fugazi guitarist, Ian Mackaye. He currently works with teens at the Evanston Public Library where he runs a recycled drumming program and directs stage adaptations of young adult literature. He lives in Evanston, IL.

Atheism and monotheism are like peas in a pod. Outside on the vine there are many
more. It is 'the Question' that makes us human. To know 'the Answer' is not.
"So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and in the service of your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day you go over the great divide. Always give a word or a sign of salute when passing a friend, even a stranger when in a lonely place. Show respect to all and grovel to none.
Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision. When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home."
Partial quote of Tecumtha, Shawnee mystic and warrior.Posted by thesavageirish on 2008-06-25 11:32:20

I suppose that which is hard to understand will be widely misunderstood.
On one side are the magical thinkers with this or that fantasy, or subjective experience that often causes much illogical behavior and thinking, and on the other side the Atheists this thread is about who can even point to the regions of the brain that cause that subjective experience, but reject the deeper understanding that is as real as what they do believe in, but are to lazy or jaded to spend the effort to understand. Is there so few willing to spend that effort?
While it is certainly true that a cult that is based on free thought, deep thinking and diverse opinions is a contradiction of terms, such religions have arisen without a cult phase, or occasionally, such as early Greece, evolve from a cult or group of cults
The world again stands on such a precipice of evolution. I don't know if such evolution can be aided or fought except by each person becoming that mental evolution. I think that this time the survival of the species is dependent on a minimum number of folk doing so.Posted by FreeDem on 2008-06-20 08:57:14

Dudes,
Science cannot comment on what it cannot measure.
Real people have real mystical experiences that, due to their nature, are subjective and untestable.
"Dow picked a defining trait of religion: the desire to proclaim religious information to others, such as a belief in the afterlife. He assumed that this trait was genetic."
I think that, for most people ("the followers") the desire to proclaim is more an ego thing and religion, esp. for monotheists, becomes Us vs. Them. Shit, Constantine was a Mithraite who "converted" to Christianity to maintain political control.
Ego is formed when universal awareness becomes localized in a physical body. Seeing itself as small and powerless, it likes whatever makes it bigger and more powerful. It hates whatever threatens its size, power, existence.
IF more people would realize the symbolic meaning of their religious scriptures, and acknowledge their brotherhood with the rest of humanity (see Alvin Boyd Kuhn), maybe humanity as a whole would evolve.
But maybe not. As Nisargadatta says, the holy men have come and gone--how are we now? Billions of humans, but only a few lightbulbs going on at any given time.Posted by Dude on 2008-06-18 18:49:25

mlwmohawk - Thanks for the interchange. I think the difference between you and i is perhaps that you seem to exist in a "pure" state (things have been proven or not), while i exist in a 'mixed" state (that is i exist in multiple states simultaneously, leaving me open to possibilities that are neither proven/provable nor unproven/unprovable). From my experience, our differences are very stereotypical of engineers vs physicists.
Jon B - I find Brian Greene to be an excellent author and have enjoyed a few of of his books (i am about 3/4 of the way through The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality right now). From my point of view, we have just begun to scratch the surface of what can be known and i fully expect many more paradigm shifts as time goes by.Posted by wolf on 2008-06-04 12:10:01

Newer theories in physics are not my strong suit. I do read books about it as they come out, "popularized physics" (Brian Greene, etc.). I'm inclined to accept something new (yet old) of a repeating universe (from string theory). Considering quantum physics, I can accept that since we seem to be discovering so much in such a relatively short time that we will continue to discover more and these "mysteries" will be revealed in due time. Although, repeating universe and others may always only be mathematical probabilities and have no physical proofs, rendering them as some sort of scientific religions. But trust me, I'm no physics wiz.
I understand your belief (interconnection of life) as its' base can easily be assumed from an initial big bang or repeating big bang, and I can put more belief into that (which would in the end be science based) than any sort of mythical type god system. I can imagine that our quantum being is in some ways different than our physical being, if that makes any sense. But I'm skeptical, as always, and without enough information I can't even begin to assign some sort of probability.
I like to think of quantum physics as just a tip of an iceberg to more knowledge. Sort of like the Vikings seeing just a sliver of North America and not knowing anything of the vast continent.
As with so many things I look into I'm not afraid to wait for more research, in fact look forward to info that gets me thinking about possibilities.Posted by Jon B on 2008-06-04 09:57:41

"The Posted by mlwmohawk on 2008-06-04 09:44:24

Jon B - Very nicely stated. Perhaps not unrelated, i agree with much of what you have written and process information in a somewhat similar way as to what you describe.
On the subject of God, i would say that i place the probability of the idea of a "narrow" (anthropomorphic) God (like many Christians and Muslims seem to believe in) to be essentially zero. However, i would say that i place a much greater probability on the interconnection of all life, perhaps some sort of spiritual force that entangles us all together. While i am unable to provide a numerical value for my belief in this, it is decidedly not zero (or 100). The crude way in which i envision this spiritual force is that we all have little droplets of it in our beings and the spiritual force is itself some sort of ocean.
I have no opinion on if such a force/entity exists, whether it is able to be addressed by science. Perhaps so, perhaps not, certainly not currently. As of yet the only evidence i am aware of for such a force is the massive amount of anecdotal experiences of a vast number of people, both now and throughout history.
I note that, in my personal experience, i am quite accustomed to dealing with the strangeness of the universe. Quantum tunneling (what does a particle look like when i has negative energy?), string theory (11 dimensions of reality?), dual slit experiments (one particle going through both slits?), general relatively and block time (all spacetime existing "at once"?), black holes, quantum entanglement, the list goes on and on. So it is pretty easy for me to acknowledge just how little we know now and how vast and strange spacetime really is.Posted by wolf on 2008-06-04 09:00:13

wolf..."Do you pretty much only believe in what you personally completely understand? Or do you believe in science, more or less, as a whole? How do you pick and choose between what to believe from science and what to doubt? Do you believe that one day, if humans survive long enough (perhaps evolving into more sophisticated creatures) science will be able to explain everything?"
I'd like to try to explain my philosophy for these questions. I suppose by definition I'm not an atheist, I'm skeptical of a god concept as I'm skeptical of all things. Simply put, when considering my belief in something I consciously assign some sort of probability that the something is true. Nothing is 100% or has a value of zero, excepting whether I myself exist which I can't find a reason to not believe that I do. Popeye philosophy, "I think therefor I yam what I yam."
The probability of some thing being true surely depends on the information I have at my disposal now and my memory of previous information. But I also realize that I can never have ALL the information about a thing, particularly in our information age where I could read about a thing and its latest information in some scientific journal while knowing that as I read that journal, more information is being accumulated not within my knowledge notwithstanding that my memory of previous information may be faulty.
I'm quite aware that my brain isn't a perfect library of previous knowledge so when assigning a probability of truth to a thing I consider the probability an estimate.
So an example. I've read quite a bit about peak oil. There is certainly a debate about whether we have reached peak oil. Based on what I've read I've temporarily concluded that we have reached peak oil, say about a 75% chance that it's the truth. The more information that I become aware of on the subject will change the probability of belief, higher or lower. Right now, I'm still somewhat of a skeptic (25%).
Now, do I actually use a numerical value in my skepticism? No, but I can throw out a number to someone who wants to press me on how much I believe in something. Based on how I feel, I estimate how much.
The probability of God, oh I'd give it about 5% or less. I base this on the "proof" being entirely made up of hearsay evidence and even worse much of that hearsay is proclaimed to come from within other peoples minds. "god said to me..."
Probability of science as a whole, is a difficult question mainly due to the onslaught of new information that I can't possibly take in in its entirety. But the information always seems to eventually fit in somehow. The probability that science as a whole concept (as opposed to a god system) seems very high with each new barrage of information. Upwards of 95% belief in the concept.
But science is about zillions of individual pieces, how humans walk for instance. Currently science has a good handle on that, and new information is sure to be added to that, but the probability that the new information would deny that humans walk is highly unlikely.
But certainly I'm skeptical of any research in some probability. Cell phones cause cancer needs more research and I'm dubious about claims for and against.
Belief is about probability within each persons mind, how much. And finally, any probability of something being true depends on each individual's sanity. There must be some sort of margin of error thrown in to a probability based on flawed thinking based on a flawed instrument of thinking, the brain. I consider the probability of all humans to have some margin of brain defect to be high.Posted by Jon B on 2008-06-04 06:28:27

FreeDem:
"You insist that all points of information be of the Encyclopedic nature amenable to scientific investigation"
Yes. Except for the phrase "of the encylopedic nature," that is accurate. Anything less is childhood fantasy.
Your repeated use of the word "encylopedic" is, I guess, some sort of buzz word that is intended to reduce the value of actual knowledge or to imply it is somehow filtered. Maybe it is like the political spin masters using the word "elite" like its a bad thing. I don't know.
But, if you insist that "scientific investigation" is somehow a bad thing, I have to more or less ignore you on the basis of silliness. "Scientific Investigation," by its very nature is not filtered.Posted by mlwmohawk on 2008-06-04 05:14:08

NO! It is exactly the point, isnPosted by FreeDem on 2008-06-03 16:42:49

To FreeDem
"What is the need for triple redundancy? If a thing works, then it will work. If not, it needs to work or not be done in the first place. Even the first redundancy by such thinking is wasted effort,"
As an engineer by trade, I can tell you, redundancy is necessarily because nothing is perfect and things fail. Your assumption is flawed.
"Of course, no matter the religion, few would dare to not make those sacrifices to Murphy."
That is just a childish way of thinking. Murphys law is humorous, but it is in no way an actual "law."
"because if you do not properly sacrifice to him, he can, will, and has taken Human sacrifices. "
Again, childish anthropomorphizing a cause to random human mistakes.
"Titanic and Space Shuttles come most easily to mind, but the list is near endless in great ways and small."
Again, as an engineer, I know all too well why things like Titanic and the space shuttle happen. It has nothing to do with "Murphy" and has everything to do with quality control and management.
"Is is possible to explain all such disasters in ways that even the concept of Murphy plays no part? Of Course! Again that is not the point!"
NO! It is exactly the point, isn't it? No god or metaphysical entity need be used as an excuse for human error.Posted by mlwmohawk on 2008-06-03 14:05:14

Hi mlwmohawk -
The "faith" that it seems to me you have in science is in its ability to explain (successfully research?) everything. From my point of view, it misses a great deal. This is not to say that it will not eventually get around to some of the interesting stuff (the current MRI scans of the brain in action are fascinating!) , perhaps it will. Or perhaps it will simply find that its methodology is limited and of no use in what are perceived to be some of the most important issues in human lives. Which is to say that i lack faith, i think.
One of the central issues in physics today is *why* the particles have the masses they have (the masses in question are already measured). The proximate cause of the mass is already "known" to be due to the Higgs field, but when that field condensed and broke the symmetry for some (as yet unknown) reason it gave the different particles different masses. Weird and wacky, but this is how the fairy tale is writ, as of today.
The meaning of life - as an evolutionist i would have thought you would say something like "our existence is for our "selfish" genes to pass themselves on to the coming generations". Again it would be a barren way of thinking to me (especially since i have the benefit of experiencing my own existence and having my own life's meaning), but as you say "facts are facts".
I can imagine a spirituality that does not rely on what it appears you envision as god. That there is a as of yet undiscovered force/pattern to our existence that has yet to be measured and that some people have tapped into. This would be the underlying "cause" for the variety of religions we see, each trying to explain a deep phenomenon that is yet to be fully understood. While there are no definitive physical measurements for it today, given the number of people who are touched by *something* might cause one to consider its possible existence.
100 years ago or so, radioactivity was a mere fairy tale. Now it studied and well understood. Should we really believe that there are not even more significant advances of imperceptible (at least by direct human senses) things around us? How can we be sure?
One might wonder where music and art fit into this whole mess. Or ethics for that matter.
I am afraid that i was unclear about the gedanken experiment. I did not mean to imply that the answers were known and being withheld - rather i meant that the answers were simply not known and unavailable. More historical, such as a possible reason Jews did not eat cloven animals (trichinosis?), for instance. Or even perhaps a physical basis for spirituality today? Who knows?
Other examples might be those who did not know of elephants existence (say a few thousand years ago) and heard descriptions of an animal whose legs were like trees, their tails like ropes and their "noses' like snakes. Surely a man of scientific leaning would easily dismiss such an improbable animal as nonsense.
One thing i can definitely assert - the more i learn about physics (not to be immodest, but i know quite a bit), the more i realize how little we know now. Each answer leads to many more questions. While i am not asserting that there is a God, i would claim that if he existed and whispered the secrets of the universe into my ear, my head would explode. Whatever else we are, we are extremely limited and small/short-lived creatures, in a universe of wonders we cannot begin to imagine.Posted by wolf on 2008-06-03 14:04:19

So, we have two possibilities: (1) God Posted by FreeDem on 2008-06-03 13:26:40

Wolf:
"It seems to me that your faith in science rivals the faith others have in various religions"
Accepting the evidence of science is quite different than "faith."
"Do you pretty much only believe in what you personally completely understand?"
I think the usage of the word "completely" is probably impossible on some level. I do not accept *anything* unless I understand the basic concepts and theory and consider them plausible.
"science will be able to explain everything?"
Science is knowledge and a methodology for the pursuit of knowledge, the "explanations" are a practical outcome of successful research.
"physics Posted by mlwmohawk on 2008-06-03 12:43:52

FreeDem:
"Aggressive disbelief is no more than the aggressive belief in a negative"
What frustrates me most about claims of religious is that, I as an atheist, state "I do not believe in god." Theists take that as "I believe there is no god." The latter is a belief, the former is a statement of conclusion based on facts.
I do not believe in god. I do not believe in the reasons for the Iraq war, and I do not believe the 9/11 commission. These things have insufficient facts (in the case of religion, an absence of facts) to be believed.
The question: "Is there a god?" is irrelevant since the existence of any such being is a proclamation of faith. You must believe it to be true. The logical extension of which is that there must be no proof of god because proof denies faith. So, if there is no verifiable proof of god, the logical extension of that statement is that god can not assert itself in our universe outside the laws of our physical universe, because that would constitute proof. Thus proving god, and all the theologians say that this is not possible.
So, we have two possibilities: (1) God "proves" himself by affecting our universe in a detectable way. or (2) God is unable to affect the universe in a detectable way.
In the case of (1) I'll have to evaluate the evidence and decide for myself. In the case of (2) it doesn't matter if god exists.
Therefor, the pursuit of an understanding of god is pure stupidity in the case of (2) unless and until there is proof case (1)Posted by mlwmohawk on 2008-06-03 12:16:10

mlwmohawk
To take from some Indian myths where Raven did some deed or Coyote did another. Children may think that you are talking about an actual Raven or Coyote, or a god in the form of a raven or coyote (and some adults may continue to think so as well) but such thinking misses the whole point of the story that the thinking person uses for insight to what it means to be a human in the world.
Like the Great Spirit most religions do not envision a Judaic style God, and such gods as they do envision are both metaphor for aspects of human existence, and neither all knowing or all powerful, and many do not have actual "Gods" of any sort, so there are many "Atheist" Religions.
What is special about many who proclaim their Atheism as a banner is that they explicitly reject all such historical understanding, even as they make no effort to understand any part of what they are talking about.
A Confucian does not proclaim himself an Atheist but a Confucian, even though Confucius himself rejected anything metaphysical, seeking only ideas that detail how a person should behave, and the effects of that behavior.
Buddhists and Taoists have more subtlety, and express it in metaphysical terms, but again these things are mental constructs and not understood by most as anything beyond that. Again there is no God critter even as Coyote or Raven might be understood, much less Yahweh. But Buddhists and Taoists are not called Atheists, by themselves or others. And so it is with a great many.
Most folks discover more subtleties as they grow older, but they learn a lot more if they work at it. Aggressive disbelief is no more than the aggressive belief in a negative and, like all belief, like honey in a mechanical watch. Everything stops, grays disappear, and a great many fruitful paths go untraveledPosted by FreeDem on 2008-06-03 11:44:14

Hi mlwmohawk -
"because we probably are simply the sum of our parts"
Well. at least you show *some* flexibility.
It seems to me that your faith in science rivals the faith others have in various religions. Which makes me curious (after all, i am a scientist myself, mostly due to my own innate curiosity); Do you pretty much only believe in what you personally completely understand? Or do you believe in science, more or less, as a whole? How do you pick and choose between what to believe from science and what to doubt? Do you believe that one day, if humans survive long enough (perhaps evolving into more sophisticated creatures) science will be able to explain everything?
Let me also point out that what "should" be and what "is" can and often are different. E.g., physics "should" tell us why the observed particles have the masses they do, but currently does not (and perhaps may never). Perhaps science "should" tell us the meaning of life, but this seems to be in the same category as asking which slit a photon went through in a double slit experiment. That is, it is information that is not conceivably available via science (ie, it is a "dumb" question, at least scientifically).
Here is a gedanken. Imagine a people who could not understand the concept of germs (say they simply did not have the technology to get that far and would not for 100's of years). Would you be against a religious cult that gave them guidelines that helped them survive in their ignorance? Maybe they teach that you should not eat 2 day old dead chicken - not because you *always* get sick (or that *everyone* gets sick from it), but because you *might* get sick (ie, non repeatable empirical data, but in a people without the ability to compile statistics). Sometimes one has to explain things to people in a way that will get them to behave optimally when not being able to see the "big picture".Posted by wolf on 2008-06-03 11:39:59

FreeDem
I tried to find a useful identifying quote about your previous post, but I didn't find one, but your need for "deeper understanding" doesn't make sense. Deeper understanding of what?
Yes, there is philosophy, but that's not the mumbo jumbo of gods and myths. There are "thought exercises" like "if a tree falls and no one is there to hear it does it make a sound." Nonsense like that. There is the consideration of how to form a successful society. How to be happy. And so on. None of these require a god.
I guess you are trying to imply that atheists, rejecting the notion of god, are somehow missing a subtlety and lack some deeper understanding. Well, I beg to differ. From children most of us are infected with silly notions like gods and easter bunnies. It takes a HUGE logical step to free one's self from superstitions impressed on us as children. Be it that one is safe in a car during a lightning storm because of the rubber tires, or that some invisible man will send you to hell for eating meat on Friday, it takes a lot to re-educate and free yourself from these fables. Accepting for the first time that random chance plays a bigger part in life than we wish, and our fate really is in our own hands.Posted by mlwmohawk on 2008-06-03 10:23:20

wolf
"Furthermore it [science] does not address many of the most interesting phenomena we as humans experience"
This is ABSOLUTELY wrong. The interesting phenomena that humans experience should ABSOLUTELY be studied by science and we should COMPLETELY reject any foolish metaphysical explanation.
"Of course, one can always argue that such things as love and joy are merely chemical reactions and that we as physical beings are merely very complicated robots, but that, like the mechanical universe of yore, is a barren point of view, at least to me."
And there in lies the difference between a theologian an a scientist. Biological creatures are very complicated. So much so that it is currently impossible to create two identical entities even with pure DNA cloning. Yet, the more we learn, the less we can take our individuality for granted because we probably are simply the sum of our parts, regardless of complexity.
That may be a "barren point of view," but "barren" is subjective and facts are facts. I do not know what to say about a mentality that rejects facts because they dislike the point of view they convey.Posted by mlwmohawk on 2008-06-03 10:08:17

mlwmohawk - The point is not that "science is wrong", rather it is by its very nature, it is incomplete. Furthermore it does not address many of the most interesting phenomena we as humans experience. Those who seek alternative explanations and methodologies are simply exploring in different manners that can be quite fruitful. I am not, of course, talking about Fundamentalists (of any religion, or science in some cases) who seek to close their minds; rather i am referring to others who use spirituality to enhance and open their minds to new possibilities. The Dali Lama comes to mind as a famous example, but of course their are many others.
Of course, one can always argue that such things as love and joy are merely chemical reactions and that we as physical beings are merely very complicated robots, but that, like the mechanical universe of yore, is a barren point of view, at least to me. (I am not saying you or anyone else is espousing this as an argument, just pointing out the obvious.)
(Just to be perverse, the sun just as much revolves around the earth as vice versa. It is all a matter of perspective, there is really no preferred reference frame, at least in the current general relatively "myth" (formalism, if you prefer). Of course, a new paradigm may come around that disputes this and completely changes our point of views. . . )Posted by wolf on 2008-06-03 09:38:59

The Posted by FreeDem on 2008-06-03 09:24:23

FreeDem:
"reject the rational 'many subtleties explain deeper understanding'"
Deeper understanding of what?
"Yes people use the ignorant to con with simple platitudes and give themselves power, and do great damage, but it is the con that is the problem and not the legitimate understanding of what they are perverting."
Again, "legitimate understanding" of what?
"actual religion has a long history in which nearly everything is given up in pursuit of free inquiry"
How can you inquire about that which requires faith? The inquiry of "faith," is merely enforcement of the delusion.
"If you are Mohawk then some of your ancestors understood this."
I beg to differ, and while much of the history of the various nations has been lost, there is a vast misunderstanding between what the whites think the indians believed and what they actually believed. They never fought religious wars. They shunned actually speaking of it. "The great mystery," was a proud exclamation that they did not know. The "great spirit," was not so much an entity but a metaphor for life. Just as the spirit of animals was not a metaphysical spirit, but behavioral wisdom of various animals. Not only that, there were over 500 different nations of indians each with differing belief systems.
Superstitions not withstanding, its time we put the god delusion behind us.Posted by mlwmohawk on 2008-06-03 08:59:27

mlwmohawk
You continue to react to the ignorant "bible as encyclopedia", and reject the rational "many subtleties explain deeper understanding" . Yes people use the ignorant to con with simple platitudes and give themselves power, and do great damage, but it is the con that is the problem and not the legitimate understanding of what they are perverting.
It is the perversion that fights inquiry, actual religion has a long history in which nearly everything is given up in pursuit of free inquiry. It is the normal distractions of civil life that leads the monk and hermit to give these up in that pursuit. Sometimes such sacrifice bears great fruit, sometimes not. And sometimes a sharpie will pretend to understand and launch a cult or "religion" that is only a corpse of that fruit with none of its life.
If you are Mohawk then some of your ancestors understood this, and others also used religion as a perversion to give themselves power. Some who were Indians, but probably not your ancestors, created theocracies more horrid than any in Eurasia. But still it is the perversion that must be addressed and not made a new perversion that removes all questions and understandings that simple hard experiments cannot address or confirm.
That way leads to a lot more gadgets, but less understanding than Medieval Europe when such things led to perhaps the lowest ebb of human understanding in human history.Posted by FreeDem on 2008-06-03 08:03:58

Dear FreeDem
"To dismiss the thinking of thousands of such smart people, working for thousands of years, because a few ignorant people think that the simple con game they fell for is all there is, and therefore such ignorance is proof that all the unexamined rest is equally ignorant, is itself as narrow and mindless as the folk they ridicule."
Obviously I disagree. a few hundred years ago, it was a sin to state that the earth was round and that it revolved around the sun. Why was it necessary to fight inquiry so vigorously?
Why were people burned at the stake for not believing? Why were the indians, my ancestors, threatened with death or conversion to catholisism?
People who believe in religion are the soldiers. The pawns of the game. The expendable unwashed masses. The leaders of a religion can't possibly believe what they say and do what they do. From catholisism to islam to scientology, the leaders constantly betray the beliefs to forward their agenda.
Religion, the belief in a god, is the greatest con-job in the history of con-jobs. Would we applaud Abraham today or would child services lock him up for attempted murder?Posted by mlwmohawk on 2008-06-03 06:36:15

Dear Wolf:
This is the classic "science was wrong before, why is it right now?" argument, which on the surface sounds plausible, but, of course, it is well crafted nonsense designed to create doubt about well researched fact and knowledge amongst those not willing to dissect what is being attempted.
Isaac Asimov wrote a very good piece about this subject. The basic premise of which is that science wasn't wrong, per se' It was functionally accurate within the context of technology over time.
For instance, people believed the earth was flat because it was observably flat, and for the scale of human endevor at the time, flat was good enough. As technology progressed, we began to realize that the world was not, in fact, flat, but was spherical. We had to realize this as we started recording our observations as we traveled ever greater distances where the curvature of the earth made a difference.
But wait! now we find that there earth is not sperical, but more egg shaped. Science was wrong! Of course it was not 100% accrate, it got as close as it could get with the technology at hand. The question is, was saying the earth is a sphere a non-sequitur or was it "fundamentally more accurate" than saying the earth was flat?
This is quite different than saying that science has a history of being wrong, no, science has a history of refinement and improvement. Science evolves along a logical progression of improved and increased knowledge.
Geometry, is not wrong. It is a mathematical model on a theoretically perfect space. I chose geometry for this very specific reason knowing that someone would attempt to argue this very point.
As a science, as a math, it is provable. As a methodology it is indisputable in its value for building almost anything. The question is, is geometry "wrong?" Is it a "myth?" No, it is not 100% accurate in the universe as we know it, but it is good enough for what we are doing now. Nothing we have discovered since Euclid has invalidated geometry for practical purposes.
The fact that there can be expressed a fundamentally more complex geometry based on relativity and space time, whose effects are at best negligible at our current technological abilities, does not invalidate euclidean geometry, it merely improves upon it.
The religious like to point at the constant refinement and improvement of science as evidence that science is wrong. There is a difference between a refinement and an improvement and being wrong. It isn't as if we'll wake up some day and discover that the earth is, in fact, flat or that the sun revolves around the earth.
The same goes with evolution. We *know* evolution as a biological process in organisms is a fact. There is enough evidence to be 100% confident that there is an evolutionary progression of animals (as well as human beings) over time. The specific course that progression has taken is currently being researched and it is fascinating. We are not going to wake up some morning and discover, no wait, we were wrong, we were created. That's just as likely as the earth being flat.Posted by mlwmohawk on 2008-06-03 06:18:43

Amazing how people argue about the obvious and ignore the main point of the article.
While some people (notably Fundamentalists) think that their Religion is an encyclopedia, many religious folk do not, and there are many religions where the very idea that religion should be such a thing is nonsense.
To shorten the argument, the Atheists Mr Dapier is talking about are saying that the Bible contains many factual errors and the heroes of the Bible do some truly awful things, and the Judaic God seems highly improbable.
So far, so good, most folk, religious and otherwise can agree with much or all of that. Even many Christians, Muslims and Jews can think it privately, even when they do not find it a good thing to do so publicly, considering it a useful structure to accomplish good things, even as some use it for very bad purposes.
The part that Mr Dapier's Atheists miss is exactly the same as the Fundamentalists miss, and that is all the parts of Religion that have nothing to do with encyclopedias! The one sees only narrow explanations and believes them, and the other sees only the same narrow bits but does not.
You don't think that there is a grand planner of the universe, with trillions of galaxies, each with billions of stars, that has such a weak ego that a lack of Sycophancy by a few creatures on a single planet would cause murderous rage? Well that is a perfectly reasonable way to think.
However the universe is more complicated than anyone can easily see, and a great many very smart people have each noticed a thing or two that perhaps those atheists may have missed. If their point was easy to point out then few would have missed it, but usually it is not and one has to look hard and think deeply to catch what they are saying.
To dismiss the thinking of thousands of such smart people, working for thousands of years, because a few ignorant people think that the simple con game they fell for is all there is, and therefore such ignorance is proof that all the unexamined rest is equally ignorant, is itself as narrow and mindless as the folk they ridicule.Posted by FreeDem on 2008-06-02 22:43:25

"Why not say donPosted by wolf on 2008-06-02 10:51:03

Jon B.
One of my favorite cristian stupidities is the 10 commandments. There are three separate and contradictory versions of the 10 commandments. The christians and the jews use different commandments, the jews use the the set which includes a restriction of milk and meat.Posted by mlwmohawk on 2008-06-02 05:15:20

Marta,
You posted the birth of religion options, mental artifact, etc.
You know I always just figured that early humans spent plenty of time staring at the stars as entertainment (their version of TV) and not understanding the celestial bodies, and in particular the planets moving differently than the stars, began to create stories about them.
The stories may have been completely different than the written history of the Greeks, but the eons of time would have given humans plenty of opportunity to create all sorts of fantasies to imagine in the night sky. I suppose creating characters with attributes of gods was probably inevitable.
As an atheist myself, I think the evolution of god theory to a one god system was probably the worst thing you could say about the worlds' religions. Now it has become "my god is the real god."
If I read the ten commandments correctly, even the Jews believed in multiple gods (no other gods before me) but decided their god was the best god. They had chosen to believe their god traveled with them, rather than believing in whatever local gods were in their new location.
Once a one god system was developed it was all downhill from there. From simple bragging, to intolerance, to torture, to war, all in the name of selfishly believing ones particular god theory is infallible.
Eventually (I have no idea when) scientific enlightenment will surpass religion, atheists will become the majority. It took a hell (I know, hell doesn't exist) of a long time to develop gods, then a one god. Darwinism is not that old in comparison, it will take time.
As to Hedges and Hitchens/Harris...this is nothing but one opinion trying to answer one track of belief out of atheists. I certainly don't buy into Hitchens/Harris aggression towards Islam and plenty of atheists don't.
I'm not even sure the aggression towards Islam isn't more geopolitical than religious, they've got the oil you know. Oil is why we are there, oil is why bin Laden wants us out, oil is almost entirely why we we even pay attention to the Middle East. If Buddhists ran the oil countries of the Middle East, Harris and Hitchens would be all over them and it would seem anti-religious, because in that case factions of the Buddhists would eventually feel that the United States was trying to dominate their region and try to thwart us. The fact is that the region is far more complicated than "us vs. them" in the religious sense.Posted by Jon B on 2008-06-01 05:39:07

Marta:
If I may continue my diatribe against religion....
You bring up a very good example: Huckabee. I don't know which is true, is he a cynical lying manipulator or a delusional psychopath?
Don't believe in evolution? Why not say don't believe in geometry?
Its crazy.Posted by mlwmohawk on 2008-05-30 20:14:44

mlwmohawk
Absolutely NO argument there.
It sent a chill down my spine when I heard that Republican Presidential candidates Huckabee, Brownback and Tancredo had said they did NOT believe in Evolution.
We are the most militarily powerful country in the world, yet 3 candidates and the majority of the US population are back in the Dark Ages. They don't believe in Evolution, but they believe in Astrology.
I'd say we have a dangerous problem.Posted by Marta on 2008-05-30 05:40:01

The problem with religion is that it is a lie. It has always been a lie. The problem with lies is that the people who tell them have to fight the lie from being exposed and the people who believe the lies, for what ever reason, either have to face disillusionment or self denial.
On top of that, the lie is impossible, and it is almost as if the tellers of the lies try to see how ridiculous they can make it and still be believed. Take for instance, Adam and Eve and Noah's Ark. These stories are impossible. Period.
Noah's Ark, may have a grain of reference to a known historical event, but the story as presented, is impossible. Adam and Eve, from everything we know about biology, evolution, the history of this planet, and DNA is also impossible. Yet, there are believers looking for archaeological evidence of Noah's Ark and Adam and Eve. Why? Because they are delusional.
Delusional people are useful for an existing power structure. Properly motivated, they'll kill your enemy, fly planes into buildings, burn books, etc.
Atheism is about shedding light on the lie. It is about freeing the sheep from the fold and making adults out of the childish believers.Posted by mlwmohawk on 2008-05-30 05:22:39

Thanks for reading my missive, Marta, but the title of Hedges' book is "I Don't Believe in Atheists" - not " I Like Them Atheists." This parson has chosen to chase wars, believes Christ is his answer to whatever he witnessed, and goes on to castigate rationalists for some imagined "utopian" mindset he likens, absurdly, to whatever inhumanity he noticed along his merry way - did he earn some sainthood by choosing to take notes as genocide occurred around the globe, yet again? He does not stand for the dignity of man. He stands for petulant self-basting of ennoblement - not a fun way to live. I vote for the immensely more talented, immensely more humane and crackerjack writer, a French professor at Open University named Michel Onfray , who a year or two ago wrote "The Atheist Manifesto," by far the best book to come out on the subject. Good luck, though Marta - time is just getting short to be so damn tolerant of everybody who says a few good things while opining stupidly about everything else.Posted by notabilia on 2008-05-29 19:33:02

notabilia
Atheist bashing on this forum?
I'm an atheist, and have not felt that.
Hedges is an excellent writer haunted by what he witnessed in Serbia, Iraq, Central America and other areas of death and destruction on this sad planet of ours.
He's not blaming Atheism for these wars, far from it. War is about acquisition, and religion is the prefect mask to hide the evil as the predators murder and pillage.
His gripe is not with Atheists, or even Atheism, but with people like Chris Hitchens-- not because Hitchens is an Atheist, but because Hitchens has become a Super Hawk on the Iraq War.
I have the same respect for Chris Hedges as I have for any person- religious or not- who speaks out against atrocities and for the dignity of every human being.Posted by Marta on 2008-05-29 00:49:32

Again, In These Times, with the atheist-bashing! I did get one letter to the editor published when you went off on Dawkins, but like all the other pietists, you seem to always let the junior varsity keep up the defense of dear old Dad's religion.
Hedges is a modern Parson Weems, enacting his psycho-drama of sin that he just couldn't get enough of in his chosen war zones, and now inflicts on his global flock. Whoever his father was, and maybe he was the white Martin Luther King, maybe he wasn't, the history of Christianity is one of terrible ignorance, persecution, and irrationality - so why is Hedges choosing to re-up with them? Atheists have an absolutely minor presence in this allegedly secular republic that still has "in God We Trust" on money, still "pledges allegiance" to "God," still has neo-con Armageddonists in seats of political power, still is suffused with malevolent religious law and practice up and down its highways adn boardrooms - and yet what exercises this boring fraud is that someone dares to call for a better world?
Sure, atheism is but a necessary first step - Harris has an appalling Muslim blind spot and is a self-professed "non-atheist," Dawkins has some dubious associations and assertions (with the execrable fake skeptic and neo-con Michael Shermer), Dennett is far into the academic wormhole, and Hitchens is a turncoat of the highest order, but then, so what? Only Dawkins, of the alleged trinity, has not jumped the shark. Atheism can go many ways after it rejects the stupidities of religion, many bad, some better, none guaranteed.
Treating Hedges respectfully is giving his brand of autistic self-abnegation too much play in a devolving intellectual world. The insipid quote Dapier ends with from Hedges, "It is fear, ignorance, a lack of introspection and the illusion that we can create a harmonious world that leads us to sanction the immoral" is just about as chowderheaded a statement as this year will produce - no, Hedges, it is dying babies without food, incinerated villagers, withheld medicines for malarial sufferers, bloated plutocrats gathering more tax riches, enforced fascism, all happening right alongside religion, with the connivance of religious charlatans, and with Hedges' public endorsement of religion. How's that for "immorality"?Posted by notabilia on 2008-05-28 16:51:12

One does wonder how and why spacetime came into being. How did it have such low entropy (what "wound up the spring")?
Does free will exist, or are we all merely beads on a wire (i vote for the latter)? From a merely physical point of view, spacetime seems to have been created all at once, despite our belief in past, present and future. Nowhere in the sciences can we find a "specialness" about the present, it is just a moment, just as the chair i sit in now is just a location (really, to separate space from time is wholly unjustified, but it helps the metaphor).
Is spacetime really all that is, or is there more? Perhaps it is just a projection of reality, not the entire ball of wax.
If nothing else, it is clear - at least to me - that we know far less than what there is to know. I could no more believe that this - spacetime, us, consciousness - is all that there is than i could believe that there is even more. . .Posted by wolf on 2008-05-27 15:32:47

mlwmohawk
Today's NEW SCIENTIST has an interesting article which relates to this discussion.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13983
Religion is a product of evolution, software suggests
God may work in mysterious ways, but a simple computer program may explain how religion evolved
By distilling religious belief into a genetic predisposition to pass along unverifiable information, the program predicts that religion will flourish. However, religion only takes hold if non-believers help believers out Posted by Marta on 2008-05-27 13:41:25

mlwmohawk
I wish education and science were the cure for the need for religion, but I don't think that's the case. I think it's much more complex than that. There are many educated people who are religious and there are many uneducated but thinking people who are Atheists.
My entire family received a good education with an emphasis on science, as there are many who are in the medical field.
However with the exception of one brother and me, they are all Catholic (in their defense they all believe in Evolution) but they go to Church and speak of God as something that exists. I remember the look one of my cousin's face when I mentioned that I was an Atheist. He said, "You don't believe in God?" as if I was denying the existence of gravity.
My mother tried to raise me Catholic, but it just never took, it never made sense to me, even early on. When I was forced to make my "First Communion" it seemed like a dumb thing to do, even at 8 years old.
Funny story: I met my paternal grandfather and my father when I was in my teens. (My parents broke up when I was two) I found out they were both hard-core atheists. During an early conversation with my grandfather, who was in his 90's at the time, he asked me. "You're not a believer like your mother, are you?"
We really got along after I laughed and told him no.
Hey, maybe it's genetic, like musical talent... (joke)Posted by Marta on 2008-05-25 12:51:13

Dear Marta:
Your Point:
Zeus=God
Jesus= Dionysus, Horus, Osiris,
Virgin Mary= Isis, Venus, Athena
Or the equivocation of religions is a fairly common, how would you say it, way of accepting and conflating religions that are vastly different in philosophy and structure, in a way to say "its all the same thing." When the true believers of these religions would probably have you killed for suggesting it.
My point about the "easter bunny" was about rational proof. I ask you, in a factual and verifiable way, prove to me there is no easter bunny. Furthermore prove to me the easter bunny is not the god I believe him to be.
This is the crux of the biggest disease challenging man kind since people started to believe in myths that seemed to explain what they did not know.
There is a phrase, "the world is getting smaller every day." Not physically, obviously, but in a practical human contact sort of way, it is much smaller. Time was you could only wipe out a village with stupidity. Or an isolated island, like Easter Island. Today technology exists or can be fabricated to destroy land masses.
Do we really accept for the human race, the irrationally faithful who burn books, fly planes into buildings, use god to defend a war of choice in the middle east that has likely killed more than 100,000 people, to continue to exist?
If these people were unable to read or perform simple math. We'd send teachers to help. If these people were performing human sacrifice would we not stop them? The 100,000 dead in Iraq are no less dead than those that have died from human sacrifice and its pretty hard to see a different excuse for their deaths.
Religion is a disease of insanity. The cure is education and science.Posted by mlwmohawk on 2008-05-24 04:42:32

mlwmohawk
Zeus=God
Jesus= Dionysus, Horus, Osiris,
Virgin Mary= Isis, Venus, Athena
And so on, in every culture, and with the ages, each one builds on the earlier. I find it fascinating, from an anthropological point of view.
Easter Bunny is not a "god,Posted by Marta on 2008-05-23 18:21:51

Dear Marta:
While I really do understand your points, I think we are on a speeding train of destruction. Islamists on one side, christians on the other, scientologists with lawyers beyond them, and so many more cults and crazies that you can't even count.
If you lend legitimacy to one, you allow legitimacy for all. Not one of these belief systems have a rational leg to stand on with regard reality.
People BELIEVE that they are safe in a car because of the rubber tires. This is, of course, false and believing it is dangerous. In fact may be life threatening if you base a course of action on the hope that a piece of rubber the thickness of a tire will protect you if you stand on it. The rubber tires myth is simply not true. It is pure ignorance in this day and age that this myth persists.
The willingness to believe something and the popularity of a belief has no place in a rational society, ESPECIALLY a democracy. If one thinks about the utter failure of this "faith based" presidency, you could make the argument that ONLY atheists should be allowed positions of power.
Religion clouds your reason. It allows despicable people to sound legitimate. It almost always seeks to censor, and it is almost always irrationally violent when confronted.
I'm tired of the primitives and children praying for results. We, as a nation, have to realize there is no god to help us, and roll up our sleeves and help ourselves.
Would you not be worried about a politician or school teacher exposing the spiritual benefits of the easter bunny? Praying to the easter bunny? Saying the easter bunny is a greater authority? Going to easter bunny church every sunday? Teaching children about the great loving easter bunny that rose from the dead?
Logically speaking, there is conceptually no difference betwen "god" and "easter bunny." Society is simply used to this nonsense and I think it is time for the world to grow up as these conflicts are killing thousands of people each year.Posted by mlwmohawk on 2008-05-23 11:31:54

mlwmohawk
You make many excellent points, which I completely agree with.
However, we must be careful not to appear condescending to Theists--at least the one we want as friends.
My own mother ( an otherwise intelligent, educated person) had the audacity to tell me" "Of course you believe in god! You just don't realize it."
That kind of patronizing attitude makes enemies, and I want to keep my Theist friends. I just don't discuss religion with them. Spirituality, yes, but not religion.
In my ideal world, there would be no religion, and spirituality would be based on ethics and common sense.
However, there seems to be a strange need in the majority of the human race to explain the existential abyss. Why else do so many keep seeing Jesus and/or Mary in water stains, or crumpets?Posted by Marta on 2008-05-23 05:55:03

As a long term atheist, I think any attitude toward religion that goes beyond mere acceptance of it to appreciation or even encouragement is wrong.
The quote: "We are all atheists, I merely believe in one fewer gods than you. when you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." Is an important logical statement and embodies history, reason, and common sense.
The religious point to religion as the motivation of great works of peace. Perhaps they were but good and bad people occur in every environment, but there are far more christians on death row than atheists. You can't claim motivation for one and disavow responsibility for the other.
I think we as a species have to grow up. The idea that some unprovable entity watches down over us is absurd. That it would choose one brutish boxer in the ring over another and yet allow thousands to die in a cyclone because of "free will," is such an unreasonable position it must be considered childish "magical thinking."
I have come to the conclusion, in my life, that religion is harmful to the species and the planet. It allows unreasonable ideas to foster and it is now and historically a tool for evil men to use against those not equipped with the good sense of atheism.Posted by mlwmohawk on 2008-05-23 04:13:04

Thoughtless arrogance is a bad thing no matter the source. Islamists , Domionists, and many others are simply very displeased to see folk enjoying themselves, and think that an elite group should control such things and enjoy the benefits alone. The Religious fundamentalist would put their particular flavor in charge be that flavor Islamist, Dominionist, or Soviet Atheism. Thus even when it is Religious, it is Political.
That said there are many folk of reason who are none the less also religious. There are also many Religions that do not include a god in their understanding. It is only this dance between the Judaic Trinity of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, and only the denial of that concept that produces the likes of Harris, Hitchens, et al. and the lack of curiosity to look beyond that I find quite baffling.
I would like to see a discussion about many concepts that have religious overtones, but the constant back and forth about whether the Bible is an accurate encyclopedia is a very sterile discussion, as is the horse race about it being a good source of Morality. A deep discussion of the actual issues and their place in society would be so much more interesting and productivePosted by FreeDem on 2008-05-22 09:59:53

Though I've been a complete and unapologetic atheist since I was 12, I'd rather have one million people who think like Chris Hedges, than one Christopher Hitchens with power on this planet.
I don't know what the hell happened to Hitchens' once-lucid brain. Was it booze, not enough fame, creeping obesity? Hard to believe that this is the same person who wrote a scathing (and factual) book on the crimes of Henry Kissinger, but who now praises Bush and Cheney's Iraq Disaster?
The man has gone completely around the bend. In his wrinkled and too-snug white suit and open shirt, he looks like a Miami coke dealer, or a sloppy drunk in some imagined 1980's Casablanca. And in his rabid rants against ALL believers he sounds more like a Stalinist that the Atheists I hang out with.
I have huge problems with organized religion, as I've seen that they are all about control, manipulation, and the accumulation of wealth & power. However, individual Theists do not all fit into that mold, and can be generous, open, giving and non-judgmental, same as Atheists.
I saw a PBS interview with Hedges. He's sane, rational, tolerant, and most importantly- Anti-War. I could NOT care less care that he believes in God- so do some of my friends. That's their business; it doesn't affect my life.Posted by Marta on 2008-05-21 04:51:02

I haven't read this book, but have read several Hedges articles and seen the debates mentioned. As an atheist, I agree his attempts at defending religion are pretty pathetic. But his commentary on global politics and US imperialism are often spot on. I cringe at so many of the political comments Harris and particularly Hitchens make (Dawkins is decidedly not like them on this point). I really can't understand their position that radical Islamists are motivated solely by religion and not by politics at all.
bin Laden gave three reasons for turning against the US (remember, he was our creation, but ok so long as his terror was directed at people we didn't like). One was that US bases are in the Saudi holy land, another that we support Israeli oppression against Palestinians while claiming to be neutral, and the last was the million or so killed by the sanctions against Iraq in the 1990's. Whether one accepts these as true or not is not the point. The point is that two are entirely political reasons and the first one is both religious and political. Even if the leaders of terrorist groups were driven solely by religion, their success in spreading their terrible creed to their minions is hugely driven by the political unrest encapsulated in the grievances above.
That Harris and Hitchens are blind to this is difficult for me as a rationalist to explain, but here Hedges goes wrong again by saying that it is their atheism that drives them to this conclusion (if the above review is true). Clearly atheists and the faithful can both go wrong on this point and I somehow doubt there are more atheists in this camp than religious people.
Rule of thumb: Read Harris and Hitchens for their views on religion, but avoid them for political analysis. Visa versa for Hedges.Posted by Valis on 2008-05-21 02:31:53